What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Part I: Car-be-que, or Mmmm. That Smells Delicious.

It is 1996.

The guy next to me is honking, motioning for me to pull
over.

What? No. Do I look dumb? No, I am not pulling over.

Hoooooonk! Honkity-honk-honk-honk!

Tenacious, this one.

I turn down my radio, lean over and unwind the passenger
window. In a Hyundai, it’s all within
reach.

“Your engine,” the man next to me yells, “is on fire!”

What did he just say?
My default setting for confusion is to frown and seek
clarification. My forehead wrinkles
mightily. “What?” I yell.

“Your engine,” he yells, pointing frantically at the
forward facing, hood-ish part of the vehicle, “is on fire! FIRE!”

And that’s when the flames shoot from under the hood.

Oh. That.

It’s funny, how quickly people move aside for a car on
fire.

I pull over under an overpass, the front of my vehicle
now fully engulfed. I get out, sling my
purse around my neck and head to the backseat where I rescue a pair of work
shoes and a vacuum cleaner.

I am going back for the bucket and a bottle of bleach
when a hand claps itself onto my shoulder.

“No more!” I turn
around to discover a fireman. Just
beyond him is a fire truck.

To this point in my lifetime, I’d not had a fire truck
sneak up behind me.

I hold the vacuum cleaner out in front of me, as if to
prove something. “But I clean houses!” I shout.
I realize I am shouting. “But I
clean houses,” I say sheepishly.

“You won’t clean anything covered with burns,” he notes.

Good point.

And then I realized:
I am single. My son is 12. My only
car is on fire.

I have no way to work Monday.

And I'll never have all those fabulous bumper stickers again.

I burst into tears.

That night, I call my boss at his home, tell him the story.

“Pearl,” he says, “how much do you trust me?”

“Ridiculously large amounts,” I say.
“I put ridiculously large amounts of trust in you.”

He smiles, a sound that transmits over the wires. “You need to find a ride,” he smiles. “For a week.
Get a ride for a week.”

I'm glad I don't have to speak right now because my mouth is hanging open. Can't wait for tomorrow's installment!

This reminds me of a time I was behind an elderly man who was driving a pickup on the interstate. The recliner he had in the back of the truck tumbled out and bounced a couple of times onto the shoulder. I sped up to pull even with him and somehow let him know, although there is not a universal gesture for "Your recliner has fallen out of your truck."

He looked at me and sped up. I sped up and pulled even again, and he acclerated even more. It was when I reached 90 that I realized maybe that was his plan all along, to dump his unwanted recliner on the roadside. I'm still fairly clueless about a lot of things.

Simply, I still don't know where that fire truck came from. I suppose someone called that there was some ditzy woman driving a car down the road with flames shooting from under her hood...

Shelly, I wouldn't have caught on to that either. :-) It would not have occurred to me that someone would risk someone else's vehicle/health like that all in the name of dumping an unused chair! What? Has he never heard of a bonfire?!

My wife has a SNOB policy, Stickers Not On Bumpers, so I have only shiny chrome and equaLLy unadorned windows. When I got my most recent vehicle I did replace the worn out Ford emblem on the front griLL.

Joyful, honestly, I think I was just so shocked that I was in a daze. Either that, or they really did sneak up on me. :-)

Starting Over, 1. I needed that vacuum! and 2. I think it was one of those weird things you do while upset. :-)

Green Girl, all I could think of what how close to "hand to mouth" I lived and what it would be like to be car-less. I lived in a suburb and worked in another suburb -- no bus commute either way in under 2 hours. I would go on to become absolutely terrified of what was going to happen next...

bill, I think the bumper stickers are what brought it home to me, even more than the burning car. The bands I'd seen, the people I'd been with, all flashed before me as I realized that nothing would or could be the same again. Standing there with my vacuum and my shoes, I realized that something so simple could make or break you.

esb, ah, but that's the beauty of being single. It's all yours. (Of course, it's all yours to fix, too...)

The worst meetings in the history of my automotive career involved "thermal incidents". You would be amazed how often cars and their various components start on fire and burn up. And how far people will go to prove it could not possibly be their piece of crap part.

I think I sense a happy ending. I HOPE I sense a happy ending! I feel I must share with you that I don't like unhappy endings, and Part I has an unhappy ending, so I'm really counting on Part II to come up with a save ... (whimpering quietly)

Whoa, what a cliffhanger! I feel like I got whiplash from the sudden jolt. I didn't know you had a son. Wow, that situation (no car plus responsibilities) put you in a real pressure cooker! I'm looking forward to the next installment.

It was very hard for me to read anything past the following line: "“Your engine,” the man next to me yells, “is on fire!”" I was laughing so hard just imagining it. Thank you so much for starting my day with a full fledged guffaw!